Arizona v. The Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc.

Holding: As applied to applicants who use a uniform federal form that merely requires them to aver, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens, Arizona’s requirement that would-be voters provide actual proof of U.S. citizenship is pre-empted by the National Voter Registration Act's mandate that
states “accept and use” the federal form.

Judgment: Affirmed, 7-2, in an opinion by Justice Scalia on June 17, 2013. Justice Kennedy filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Justice Thomas and Justice Alito filed dissenting opinions.

Adjudged to be AFFIRMED. Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined, and in which Kennedy, J., joined in part. Kennedy, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Thomas, J., and Alito, J., filed dissenting opinions.

On Friday the justices will meet for their March 23 conference; our "petitions to watch" for that conference will be available soon.

Major Cases

Trump v. Hawaii(1) Whether the respondents’ challenge to the president’s suspension of entry of aliens abroad is justiciable; (2) whether the proclamation – which suspends entry, subject to exceptions and case-by-case waivers, of certain categories of aliens abroad from eight countries that do not share adequate information with the United States or that present other risk factors – is a lawful exercise of the president’s authority to suspend entry of aliens abroad; (3) whether the global injunction barring enforcement of the proclamation’s entry suspensions worldwide, except as to nationals of two countries and as to persons without a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States, is impermissibly overbroad; and (4) whether the proclamation violates the establishment clause of the Constitution.

Gill v. Whitford(1) Whether the district court violated Vieth v. Jubelirer when it held that it had the authority to entertain a statewide challenge to Wisconsin's redistricting plan, instead of requiring a district-by-district analysis; (2) whether the district court violated Vieth when it held that Wisconsin's redistricting plan was an impermissible partisan gerrymander, even though it was undisputed that the plan complies with traditional redistricting principles; (3) whether the district court violated Vieth by adopting a watered-down version of the partisan-gerrymandering test employed by the plurality in Davis v. Bandemer; (4) whether the defendants are entitled, at a minimum, to present additional evidence showing that they would have prevailed under the district court's test, which the court announced only after the record had closed; and (5) whether partisan-gerrymandering claims are justiciable.

Carpenter v. United StatesWhether the warrantless seizure and search of historical cellphone records revealing the location and movements of a cellphone user over the course of 127 days is permitted by the Fourth Amendment.

Conference of March 23, 2018

Johnson v. Stinson Whether Johnson v. Jones precludes a federal appellate court from exercising jurisdiction over a challenge to a denial of qualified immunity that turns not upon disputed facts, but upon the disputed application of the inferences drawn by the district court from the facts, in concluding that a reasonable jury could find a violation of a constitutional right which was clearly established; and (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, sitting en banc, applied an impermissibly broad reading of Johnson v. Jones in vacating the opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit's three-judge panel and denying jurisdiction over Dr. Lowell T. Johnson's appeal, where the appeal sought review of the district court's determination that a reasonable jury could find that Dr. Johnson violated respondent's right to due process.